What is the Best Trait?

[Blake]

Anarchy is fixed (usually a turn, but depending on number of civics you change at a time) and not proportional to game speed AFAIK. It means that Spiritual is almost worthless on Marathon and very potent on Quick.

Actually, Anarchy period depends on two things; game speed and empire size. A very large empire gets longer anarchy.

Spiritual makes it "possible" to switch 1 civic at a time on quick (where it's usually wasteful to not switch 2 or 3 at once), and multiple civics at once on Marathon (where normally it would be like 8 turns of anarchy). So it functions differently, but on sum it's pretty much equally useful regardless of game speed.

[Shaka II]

I never really understood what determined the number of turns for anarchy, but I've had nine turns of anarchy on marathon switching to free speech and state property. Good thing I sued for peace before that. After I emerged from anarchy, I won by domination!

[trev]

Creative tech is almost useless, it is always possible to build cities so that the required resource is within the first circle of the city. Expansive suits small civs best, definitely not needed for large civs, as large civs will always gain sufficient health from founding new cities near additional resources. But on high levels small civs will get you nowhere, so abandon expansive for something more useful like organised. Some posters have said that philosophical is a good early game civic, because it gives you more great people early. I prefer to build workers, settlers, military units with my sparse shields, and spam cottages. I usually go to about a 1000AD or later before gaining any great person points, not building wonders, or keeping specialists. (2 farmed squares instead of cottages are needed to support a specialist, I prefer the money from 2 cottages than the benefit of a specialist). I can get specialists later in the game easily when the full value of their science beakers can be used in a single tech without waste. Well planned attacks supported liberally by catapults is nearly as effective as the aggresive trait. I heavily favour financial and organised as they are very beneficial to large civs which are essential to wins at higher levels.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Blake
Actually, Anarchy period depends on two things; game speed and empire size. A very large empire gets longer anarchy.

That's not my experience. Then again, it depends on what is "very large."

Anway, I have played on Normal and Epic speeds and there seems to be no perceptable difference in the Anarchy period.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by trev
Creative tech is almost useless, it is always possible to build cities so that the required resource is within the first circle of the city.

I wouldn't say a +2 culture per turn is useless. At leas not in the beginning, when you don't have that many structures that generate culture.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


That's not my experience. Then again, it depends on what is "very large."

Anway, I have played on Normal and Epic speeds and there seems to be no perceptable difference in the Anarchy period.

By "Very Large" I mean significant progress made on domination. It's especially noticable when you find you can no longer switch 2 civics in 1 turn.

[couerdelion]

Creative and Expansive

Relative to the other traits they do seem to be pretty ineffective although this may just be that I haven't figured out a way to use those traits effectively. Therein lies the secret of playing Cyrus the Puny - as all the "World Reports" seem to call him when he ever gets a name.

The traits do seem to make it possible todo things that other traits don't. Your expansive trait, for example will mean that you have far less to worry about settling in a good jungle site - and getting a free chop in the process. Forges are less likely to cause a problem in the early game while I can imagine that late game improvements like factories and coal plants are also easier to bear.

That said, health problems are not really that serious effects on the game. Happiness bonus will be a lot more useful.

The creative bonus is one that generally helps out a city to use the full city radius more quickly so is a proxy for more rapid city development. It also means that there are far fewer reasons for a civ not to settle in the best location for long term strength of a city. WIth a non-creative civ it is still usually better to be patient and find other ways of getting that culture growth rather the pick the wrong spot

[Blake]

Hmmmph I actually kind of like Cyrus, he is better than some, and Immortals are a rather nifty unit. Cre/Exp is a good combination, you get a strong land grab (free border expansions, cheap granaries) and also the combination of easy happy (from cheap theatres + slider) and health (expansionist). Granted you gotta spam a lot of cottages very early (preferably wheel->pottery first) but it can certainly work.

Creative is good in some cases. You can have 5 culture/turn very easily. Emp AI's are fairly quick to build up culture. Cre can counter that.

I'd probably prefer cre/org but that trait combo doesn't exist, probably would be overpowered.

[JackRudd]

Most of the trait combos have a good synergy if you can find it. Although I have yet to find one for Napoleon or Alexander.

And I think part of the reason many people are picking Fin is its versatility. My favourite happens to be Ind, but it only really lends itself to one style of play. Gandhi exploits his early leg up on the religious techs to build lots of Wonders. Qin races into a tech lead and builds lots of Wonders. FDR runs Org.Rel. and Bureaucracy and builds lots of Wonders. Louis goes for a cultural victory by building lots of Wonders. Bismarck builds really big core cities and builds lots of Wonders. Napoleon... OK, I haven't figured out how to play him.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by JackRudd
Most of the trait combos have a good synergy if you can find it. Although I have yet to find one for Napoleon or Alexander.

One would hope so but your examples and my difficulty with the likes of Cyrus suggest that the synergy is not obvious.

Here's my take on Napoleon. In addition to possible early wonders, there is also the option of going for Metal Casting early for the cheap forges. The extra production is then used to create your first war machine which captures cities and these, in turn are used to drive future wars and wonder production.

Alex actually is one that is a similar one although he drives the civilisation development through a combination of Great People and War.

The way I see things, the world is hardly going to over-awed by Cyrus' wonderful theatres, colosseums, granaries and harbours.

[JackRudd]

What the world is going to be over-awed by is Cyrus's really big cities; his half-price improvements add up to much higher health and happy caps. And really big cities can be used to support most styles of play.

(This applies to Cre/Exp; it applies to Spi/Exp for much the same reason. Of course, the other advantage of playing Spi/Exp is that it means the AI isn't playing Izzy.)

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by JackRudd
What the world is going to be over-awed by is Cyrus's really big cities; his half-price improvements add up to much higher health and happy caps. And really big cities can be used to support most styles of play.

(This applies to Cre/Exp; it applies to Spi/Exp for much the same reason. Of course, the other advantage of playing Spi/Exp is that it means the AI isn't playing Izzy.)

I’ve never really had much problem getting really big cities except right at the beginning. But then I am playing at a level where the AI gets something like +3/4 health bonus so their cities generally have grown a lot earlier than mine.

One good reason to grab those large cities. They can easily produce 90+ hammers in their first turn once resistance has stopped ;-)

Nothing wrong with playing against Bella. Just like against any of the aggressive ones, you only need to make sure your troops are well enough position when she declares war on your heathen nation

[uberfish]

IMO Expansive ought to have +1 happiness in addition to the +2 health, to make it more balanced with the other traits early on. In the majority of games, happiness not health is the cap early on, and of the exp civs, only Isabella is in a good position to grab one of the early religions.

[couerdelion]

I would prefer to have just +2 happy and scrap the +2 health. Given that we have cheap granaries and harbours, the health benefits will hover between +2 and +4 relative to an equivalent non-expansive civ (depending obviously on the food resources you have). Since happiness is the more serious problem and will more often be the first constraint on a civ, improving health is no benefit at all.

Exception to the above. If you are lucky enough to find a huge floodplain area but don’t have much in the way of trees then expansive would be useful. Not all that common though

[fed1943]

I like Cyrus;I call him Mr.Land (such as Washington is Mr.Money).
Now I think the best trait is just "my best trait".
PHI is "my worst trait"because I don't know how to handle it.
Best regards,